I will have more to say about all this later, but I wanted to get just a few words in about the Biden/Palin debate tonight. My comments here are just some more amateur punditry, and not a continued discussion of the previous, um, themes, we have been discussing. In other words, quite apart from whether …
And He Wasn’t Even American
C.S. Lewis wrote a poem once—Lines During a General Election—and the first two lines go like this: “Their threats are terrible enough, but we could bear All that; it is their promises that bring despair . . .”
Which Explains a Lot of Church Services
“Postmodernism is a turning from rationality, and at the same time an embracing of spectacle” (Arthur Hunt, The Vanishing Word, p. 185).
Why Sexual Issues Are To Be Front and Center
Our culture’s wholesale abandonment of biblical ethics in matters of sexuality — what I have recently called pomosexuality — is the direct and immediate result of a failure of the Church to proclaim and live out life in Christ, life in the gospel, life in the triune God. So the way out of this impasse …
Hard Truth and Soft Comfort
As you first start coming to grips with your responsibilities in your son’s defiance and rebellions, you will have sort through the attempts at comfort that many Christian friends will offer. You will also have to learn how to reject the same suggestions that proceed every human beings natural inclination to self-justification. That false comfort …
Sex, Violence, and a Grand Identity
“Paganism can take a variety of forms, but when all is said and done, the system boils down to three simple postulates—sex, violence, and a grand identity . . . For four centuries the Protestants tried to hold them back, but the dam was breached. The gods are back in town” (Arthur Hunt, The Vanishing …
Paganism at the Movies
“The cult of celebrity fills a religious hole dug by modernism . . . The machines of show business brought the gods back to life . . . Images are pervasive, emotionally captivating, and . . . dare I say it? Sacred . . . This is what it means to be a pagan. Our …
The Homo Lobby and Hatred Inflation
A bit more on the topic of the previous post. I certainly believe that it is possible for Christians, standing for a biblical understanding of sexuality, to sin against homosexuals by means of verbal violence. Expressions of malice, pettiness, personal hostility, and so forth are prohibited in Scripture. “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, …
A Slow-Moving Pharaoh
Just a quick note to (again) clarify what I am doing with regard to Sarah Palin. As I am thinking through the whole business, some have jumped to conclusions about what I am doing, or where I must be going, or they have otherwise missed the point. Stated positively, I have wanted to clear away …
Low Empire
One of the things we have to get straight is the right relationship of the Church to various manifestations of earthly civil government. And in our setting, in our time, we have to come to grips with American hegemony in the world. That fact is a given — how shall we respond to it? One …